Original
Article
in the Internet Archive
Daily privacy threatened even more?
RFID Technology goes deeper into our private lives
By Robert Reed
October
21, 2005
Folks, there is
an upcoming adventure on our collective horizon. Let's see if I
can present this in an understandable way.
Everyone needs a little
adventure in their lives, but I'm not sure we need this kind.
It's the adventure of educating ourselves about the privacy invasions
possible in the very near future. Let's look in on a marketing
company employee about 2 years from now.
In a marketing
company office cubicle in Columbus, Ohio, a young man is staring into
his computer monitor, going over the shopping habits and patterns of
customers of a discount department store. The files show the customer's
name, a map of the route she took through the store with her shopping
cart, a thumbnail page of 8 electronic photos taken from hidden cameras
on "smart shelves", and how some of the items were used after she got
home. All the data went through automated crunching protocols,
organized in a neat package through proprietary marketing software, and
the unwitting customer will be the target of specific product marketing
through email and direct mailings. The customer's products, through
RFID tagging, will be monitored during use in the customer's house
without the customer's awareness of it.
No way, you
say. Has the author succumbed to wacky conspiracy theories?
Here's the deal. I don't sell books. Katherine Albrecht and Liz
McIntyre are two well educated pricacy advocates who are selling a
book. If you are interested, you can find out it's title.
Albrecht and McIntyre outline a brave new world of the very near
future, whereby 3 converging technologies pushed hard by lobbyists will
revolutionize marketing information collection on a scale only dreamed
of a few years back. The dark side is that the technologies can
be abused. Abuse evident already in the lists of identity that
have been stolen from internet databases on an almost regular basis
lately. Marketing information on customer purchasing habits is
valuable and companies pay big bucks for the information. They
are drooling at the technological possibilities at their doorsteps.
Here's a brief overview.
High speed
internet connectivity and radio frequency identification tags (RFID)
are the two big technologies marketers have their eyes on.
RFID is a technology for tracking an item from manufacture to point of
sale in the store. It allows sensors to pick up the tag's product
identity as it passes by sensors in the product's trip from origin to
sale. Sounds very neat and efficient, and it is. Albrecht
and McIntyre are saying that the privacy issues start in the market
using the technology. The item's RFID tag can be sensed as it is
moved through the store isles, or as it is placed in a sensor-equipped
shopping cart. The RFID-equipped shopping cart's trip is
automatically mapped and filed by computer, and when the purcase is
made with a preferred customer card or credit card, the items are tied
to the customer's name and address. Smart shelves have cameras on
them that photograph the customer's face as he or she picks the item
up. Sounds pretty wack, doesn't it? Well, you can Google
search the author names and it will lead you to indisputable evidence
of what it's all about.
So why is high
speed internet connectivity mentioned? Think of it. Two
technologies will provide high speed internet. One is "broadband
over powerline", or BPL, and the other is city wide wi-fi which is
wireless high speed internet that can be accessed from any
residence. Either of these technologies provide the possibilities
for intrusion by unwittingly placing an "RFID reader" in our home with
internet connectivity, that then senses our RFID-tagged products in our
home. Albrecht and McIntyre state that more devious privacy
invasion issues arise when the criminal element starts using the
technology to spy and stalk using "bugged" appliances that connect to
the internet by simply being plugged into the house electical power
receptacle, and then stream out the audio and video to whoever knows
the computer address of the bug device. Will your toaster have a
camera and microphone in it?
It get's even
more bizarre when Albrecht and McIntyre start talking about "deep
tissue biomedical implants", but an interview I heard with them
specified the patent number of such an implant. It's United
States Patent Application 20040174258 by Peter Seth Edelstein dated
September 9, 2004. The title is "Method and apparatus for
locating and tracking persons". If you Google search the patent
office database and put the above information in the database search,
it will provide a chilling read for you.
It's not a
pretty picture, but it is interesting and deserves a look, don't you
think? We could use a little adventure.
(Robert Reed is a
columnist for The Eureka Reporter. Views and opinions expressed in this
column do not necessarily represent those of The Eureka Reporter, its
management or staff.)
